I have been “mistaken,” “misled,” “misrepresented,” and been “unaccountably in error,”
and am sorry if you have been offended

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Election 2014: Abe Won/Lost Election…Yes? No? Whatever? Duh?

There’s
some talk out there among people wondering whether Mr. Abe “won” or “lost” the December
14 lower house election. In the most tangible sense, he won, of course, because
the coalition extended its supermajority by roughly two years, covering the
next upper house election in 2016 and his hoped-for second three-year term as
LDP president (which means prime minister), so that he can pass the baton to
his LDP successor, who can call a snap election immediately after his
appointment as prime minister close enough to the end of the lower house
members’ term so that it will cause minimum distress among vulnerable first-term
members. If that’s not a “win,” I don’t know what is.

Here’s
an argument out there that says the LDP lost because it went into the election
with 295 seats and came out with only 291. That’s a defendable argument, but
there is a counterargument. The LDP won 294 out of the 480 available seats in
the 2012 election and won 291 out of 475 in this election. That’s a drop from
61.25% to 61.13% of the seats available, representing the equivalent of a
half-seat decline, essentially a coin toss. There’s more. Of the five
prefectures that lost a third seat, the LDP made a clean sweep in both
elections in Fukui, Tokushima, and Kochi, while losing the one seat that it had
in Yamanashi (although the stealth LDP candidate won in both elections), and
lost two out of the three that it had in Saga. Redistricting obviously hurt the
LDP. Adjusted for the five-seat cut, the LDP most likely “won.” Of course that’s
no reason for the LDP to rejoice. The LDP is losing out as the conservative
boondock lose the demographics game. The many adjustments to accommodate the increasingly
irate Supreme Court, if nothing else, may redistrict the LDP out existence, if
Japan has not childlessnessed itself to extinction first. But that’s too
distant in the future to concern Mr. Abe.

There’s
a less meaningful argument that says that Mr. Abe “lost” because he did not
meet the widespread expectation among chatterists that the LDP would actually
register a gain. But we were only parroting what the media was saying. (yes, I,
as a charter member of the chatterist, dutifully reported that the
media reports were saying that the LDP would “take 300 or more seats”).
Yes, so the media reports were wrong. So? The point is?

Of
course I also made the point then that “any ‘mandate’ talk from the Abe
administration and its opinionating followers will ring hollow. Komeito will
make sure of that with regard to any attempts to push the markers further on
collective self-defense. And nothing will have changed on the socio-economic
agenda beyond the LDP promise to make good on consumption tax exceptions. And
that decision technically has preceded the election.”

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About Me

After graduation, Jun Okumura promptly entered what is now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and stayed in in its ecosystem most of his “adult” life. Along the way, he had pleasant stops in an assortment of Japanese quangos (Japangos?), overseas assignments and government agencies. After thirty years, though, it dawned on him that he had no aptitude whatsoever for administration and/or management. Armed with this epiphany, he went to the authorities and arranged an amicable separation; to come out, as it were. He is completely on his own IYKWIAS, but he and the METI folks remain “good friends.” He currently holds the titles of “visiting researcher” at the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs (no, that MIGA) and counselor at a risk analysis firm that dares not speak its name. This gives him plenty of time to blog or make money on his own. His bank account says that he does too much of the first, and insists that he do more of what he calls “intellectual odd jobs”. He wants to be paid to write fulltime, or better, talk—where the easy money is—but that distinction has largely escaped him. He really should not be referring to himself in the third person; he is not that famous.